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rfmcdonaldI owe Language Log's Mark Liberman thanks for linking to Lameen Souag's post "Language use in Tunisian politics", examining the language forms used by prominent Tunisian politicians.
The use of Tunisian Arabic versus Standard Arabic is rooted substantially in a desire to gain as wide an audience as possible. It's also profoundly rooted in the close relationship of Standard Arabic with the language of the Qu'ran. It might not be inaccurate to say that encouraging the use of colloquial Arabic dialects (as opposed to Standard Arabic) may be roughly as controversial as encouraging the use of colloquial neo-Latin languages like French and Italian (as opposed to Latin) centuries ago. An extreme form of this, seeing in the potential for the displacement of Standard Arabic an attack on Arab identity and Islam generally, can be found in Yahya Asmar's unsubtle Islamic Network article "Corruption of Arabic Language a Central Part of Cultural Attack on Muslim World".
Asmar needn't worry. Back in February 2005, I blogged about a proposed effort to dislocate shared Arabic identity by trying to encourage the rise of local Arab dialects (Moroccan, say, or Iraqi) as fully-fledged separate languages. The general consensus was that language differences weren't so large, that Standard Arabic--or popular dialects, like the Egyptian and Lebanese Arabics promoted by popular culture--was readily accessible, and that the tendency was for a stable disglossia, the two major forms of Arabic co-existing stably, each in their own domains. With Qu'ranic language forming a good part of the modern Arabic language and accordingly encouraging acquisition of a standard language not wildly different from what they already speak, standard Arabic is hardly likely to disappear. If anything, conceivably, if Arab society coalesces into some sort of polity, stable diglossia could be disrupted to the standard's advantage.
That certainly seems to be the case in China. Looking back at my earlier post, I noticed that I was too optimistic about the durability of regional Chinese languages like Cantonese and Shanghainese, which enjoyed a vaguely similar relationship to Mandarin, but which seem to be well on their way to being replaced by the Chinese national language. The key difference in that case may be the political unity of China versus the pronounced disunity of the Arab world, and the mass migrations of China versus the stabler populations of the Middle East: a stable diglossia such as exists in Tunisia may have been impossible to form in China proper. Certainly the continued vitality of Chinese regional languages in autonomous Taiwan suggests that, if political situations in Greater China were different, different outcomes could well have resulted.
For non-Arabic speakers, the key point to remember is that in any one country Arabic has at least two basic levels - formal Fusha and dialectal Darja - which are different enough grammatically and lexically to be considered separate languages, but which can be combined in appropriate circumstances.
The Prime Minister is Mohamed Ghannouchi. He first came to prominence on Saturday when he briefly declared himself acting President. This speech was entirely in Fusha - no efforts to add a personal touch here, simply officialese. The only dialectal features I notice are the pronunciation of jīm as ž, and of some short low vowels as ə. The delivery, however, is notably non-fluent - he's reading it slowly from a paper, pausing sometimes every three or four words, and he makes a mistake in case marking ('ad`ū kāffati 'abnā'i tūnəs "I call upon all the sons of Tunisia" - should have been kāffata.) Today, as Prime Minister he announced the new cabinet; his speech is a bit less halting (although still halting enough that you get several elision failures, like li al-ħayāti l`āmmah for lilħayāti l`āmmah), but as before it is entirely in Fusha and is being read out from a paper
[. . .]
Moncef Marzouki, a secular leftist opposition figure calling for the old ruling party to get out, similarly sticks to Fusha throughout a recent interview with Aljazeera, avoiding dialect forms with remarkable persistence. His language use nonetheless contrasts strikingly with Mr. Ghannouchi's: Mr. Marzouki speaks quickly and fluently off the cuff, without consulting any visible notes, and without any conspicuous errors in delivery. Yet Mr. Marzouki is only 4 years younger than Mr. Ghannouchi, and, having studied medicine, undoubtedly did his university in French; has he simply been more motivated to learn to speak to a wide audience? The choice of consistent Fusha seems to reflect Aljazeera's pan-Arab audience[.]
The regime's favourite bogeyman for many years, the Islamist leader Rachid El Ghannouchi, [. . .i]n his speech of 2 days ago, [uses] Fusha consistently and fluently, with an intonation reminiscent of a sermon, and shows only sporadic dialectal phonetic features[.] Yet he shifts into Darja briefly (at about 4:50): after warning security forces that those who kill innocents will be damned to Hell, in the maximally formal language of a quotation from the Qur'an [.], he suddenly caps it with a brief colloquial appeal to their common sense: əṭṭāġiya muš məš isədd a`līk "the tyrant isn't gonna save you". [. . .]
As for the protesters? Well, listen for yourself to one of the latest. Some slogans are definitely dialectal[.] Others are purely Fusha (though minus inconvenient case endings, as is common in less formal Fusha[.] Not hearing anything in French though, which is interesting given its prominent position in the Tunisian sociolinguistic environment: I suspect French would (rightly) be viewed as inappropriate for an appeal to the people of the nation, no matter how many people may speak it as a second language, whereas Fusha or Darja are equally suitable for demonstrations.
The use of Tunisian Arabic versus Standard Arabic is rooted substantially in a desire to gain as wide an audience as possible. It's also profoundly rooted in the close relationship of Standard Arabic with the language of the Qu'ran. It might not be inaccurate to say that encouraging the use of colloquial Arabic dialects (as opposed to Standard Arabic) may be roughly as controversial as encouraging the use of colloquial neo-Latin languages like French and Italian (as opposed to Latin) centuries ago. An extreme form of this, seeing in the potential for the displacement of Standard Arabic an attack on Arab identity and Islam generally, can be found in Yahya Asmar's unsubtle Islamic Network article "Corruption of Arabic Language a Central Part of Cultural Attack on Muslim World".
From the beginning of the Qur’an’s revelation, the Jews and mushrikeen of old Arabia, although often awestruck by its rhetorical and spiritual intensity, attempted to destroy the integrity of Islamic Arabic. This hatred of Arabic, because it is the language of the Qur’an, continued through the ages, with the enemies of Islam in all times and places attempting to corrupt Arabic and separate Muslims from the language of the Qur’an, and thereby from the Qur’an. Colonial powers, encouraged by Christian missionaries, succeeded in persuading or forcing Muslims in Africa and Asia to abandon the Arabic alphabet and adopt Latin scripts instead. One of the first official acts of the Kemalist secularisers in Turkey was the fabrication of a Roman alphabet for Turkish, while outlawing Arabic, even to the point of commissioning the call to prayer in Turkish. [. . .]
Throughout the twentieth century, Western-oriented schools and universities in the Arab and Muslim world insisted on using English and other colonial languages as their languages of instruction, and slowly the definition of an “educated” person became one who was educated in a colonial language. At the same time, catering to nationalist and modernist sentiments in the Arab world, Western-style universities also insisted on “updating” Arabic, with local Christians colonizing the language with Western words and secularising definitions and concepts present in the language from before. In recent years American-style universities have proliferated in the Arab world, especially in the oil-rich Gulf sheikdoms. Run by Western expatriates who recruit faculty-members from the ranks of missionaries, often with the blessings of the local elite, these universities are slowly whittling away at literary Arabic, replacing it with literary English. Many expatriates are repulsed by any form of Arabic, but the shrewder ones encourage the local colloquial forms, which are not written and often not intelligible to other Arabic-speakers, but which give Arab students a false sense of security that they are not forgetting their native tongue. In reality, language is inseparable from modes of thought and feeling, and giving up one’s language for another means changing one’s thinking. [. . .]
Allah has promised to protect the Qur’an, but it may be up to Muslims to protect the Arabic language, especially in its literary form. Qur’anic and literary Arabic are under assault by the enemies of Islam, who cannot bear the fact that the language of revelation from Allah Most High is still alive and relatively well among Muslims and Arabs, more than fourteen centuries after the Qur’an came down. Their hatred of Islam and of the Qur’an is the main reason for their assault on Arabic, and they have powerful local proxies to help in the task of corrupting or reformulating Arabic. Their current focus is on native speakers of Arabic, and by way of ‘education’ and satellite television the enemies of Allah are slowly making progress in their satanic quest. It is not too late to thwart them, but major efforts are necessary. Certainly Muslims and Arabs who still revere the Qur’an must take notice of these plots, and develop alternative forms of education and communication, in order to counter this diabolical onslaught.
Asmar needn't worry. Back in February 2005, I blogged about a proposed effort to dislocate shared Arabic identity by trying to encourage the rise of local Arab dialects (Moroccan, say, or Iraqi) as fully-fledged separate languages. The general consensus was that language differences weren't so large, that Standard Arabic--or popular dialects, like the Egyptian and Lebanese Arabics promoted by popular culture--was readily accessible, and that the tendency was for a stable disglossia, the two major forms of Arabic co-existing stably, each in their own domains. With Qu'ranic language forming a good part of the modern Arabic language and accordingly encouraging acquisition of a standard language not wildly different from what they already speak, standard Arabic is hardly likely to disappear. If anything, conceivably, if Arab society coalesces into some sort of polity, stable diglossia could be disrupted to the standard's advantage.
That certainly seems to be the case in China. Looking back at my earlier post, I noticed that I was too optimistic about the durability of regional Chinese languages like Cantonese and Shanghainese, which enjoyed a vaguely similar relationship to Mandarin, but which seem to be well on their way to being replaced by the Chinese national language. The key difference in that case may be the political unity of China versus the pronounced disunity of the Arab world, and the mass migrations of China versus the stabler populations of the Middle East: a stable diglossia such as exists in Tunisia may have been impossible to form in China proper. Certainly the continued vitality of Chinese regional languages in autonomous Taiwan suggests that, if political situations in Greater China were different, different outcomes could well have resulted.
